Anonymous threatens Mexico's murderous drug lords

A ruthless campaign of killing, extortion and kidnapping by
Mexico's powerful Zetas drug cartel has created plenty of enemies,
from the Mexican government to paramilitary vigilantes to rival
cartels. But now the Zetas have a new adversary: the hacker
collective Anonymous.

In a video uploaded 6 October, an Anonymous spokesperson said
that unless the Zetas release one of the group's members, the group
will reveal the photos, names and addresses of Zetas-affiliated
cops and taxi drivers. (The member was allegedly kidnapped in the
western coastal city of Veracruz during an "Operation
Paperstorm" demonstration.) Anonymous also threatened to out
journalists accused of " crapping on honest authorities like the army and the navy," the
spokesperson said.

"For the time being, we won't post photos or the names… of the
taxi drivers, the journalists or the newspapers nor of the police
officers, but if needed, we will publish them including their
addresses, to see if by doing so the government will arrest them,"
the spokesperson added.

Anonymous started out as a decentralised network of online
griefers. But they've grown increasingly political, targeting
websites ranging from Visa
and Mastercard (for their alleged financial blockade of
WikiLeaks) to a consultancy
firm linked to the US military. In October, they took aim at
the underground child pornography network Lolita City, and hackers
linked to the group leaked personal information from the
servers of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and
the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association. Perhaps most
importantly, Anonymous has provided support to the Occupy movement.

Last week, Anonymous followed up its threat to the Zetas
by defacing the website of former Tabasco state
prosecutor Gustavo Rosario Torres, accused by anti-crime
activists three years ago of discussing a $200,000 cocaine
deal with a deputy on audio tape. With a Halloween background, a
message splashed above the group's signature on Rosario's
homepage read: "Gustavo Rosario is Zeta."

This wasn't the first time Anonymous weighed in on the shady and
rumour-filled world of Mexican political corruption. One month ago,
the group launched a distributed denial-of-service attack on the state of Veracruz's official
website following speculation the recent election campaign of
Veracruz governor Javier Duarte received funding from the Zetas.

Revealing Zetas associates, however, is a different matter than
flooding a state website. And the Zetas have a history of making
their online critics pay.

In September, the Zetas hanged two people from a pedestrian
overpass in the border city of Nuevo Laredo with threats against bloggers written on a nearby banner. A
week later, a contributor to social media site Nuevo
Laredo en Vivowas found decapitated.

According to private
intelligence firm Stratfor: "Loss of life will be a certain
consequence if Anonymous releases the identities of individuals
cooperating with cartels. Whether voluntarily or not, cooperating
with criminal cartels in Mexico comes with the danger of
retribution from rival cartels."

This is a problem. At the very least, it's worth noting that
taxi drivers working as lookouts or mules for the cartels does not
mean the drivers do so willingly. As targets for
extortion, exposing their identities could mean deadly reprisal
attacks, such as what occurred during a wave of violence in the resort city of Acapulco in
February that left a dozen taxi drivers and their passengers dead
-- some decapitated by machete-wielding assassins as their cars
were set ablaze.

Even worse, provoking the Zetas could lead to further attacks
against social media users unrelated to Anonymous.

"Anonymous activists can threaten to reveal information about
cartels or launch cyberattacks," Stratfor says. "But even if the
cartels cannot track down the individuals directing cyberattacks or
releasing information, the cartels will continue to commit acts of
violence meant to warn the online community about such
activities."

In other words, if Anonymous follows through (assuming they're
not just bluffing) then writing about the drug war could become
even more dangerous for Mexican bloggers -- and wearing a Guy
Fawkes mask on a Mexican street might just become a death
warrant.

Comments

I'll believe it when I see it from Anonymous. It's not difficult to associate online data with people as so many users spend too much time online. But if drug gangs are killing other drug gangs, leave them to it.If anonymous were able to deliver, then t he world will soon have less Drug gangs, but lets face it, if that info was already available, do you not think someone in a better position would have let it out by now!...